Ironclad Evidence

Chapter 26: Ironclad Evidence

Lin Xinyi slowly walked over to Uchida's body.

Uchida still lay quietly on the ground. A bullying victim who had received too little attention in life, he had finally gained the belated attention of the police and society after death.

"Gloves."

Like a busy attending physician during surgery, Lin Xinyi held out his hand directly, asking the officers present for his tools.

"Here." A young officer hurried forward carrying a Forensic Investigation Kit.

Looking closely, it was Officer Komatsu, the familiar face Lin Xinyi had met that morning—the patrol officer who moonlighted as a coroner.

When Lin Xinyi was absent, Officer Komatsu was the coroner. But now that Lin Xinyi was here, he automatically demoted himself to the role of assistant carrying the kit.

He opened the case and respectfully handed Lin Xinyi a pair of gloves.

"I need two pairs."

Lin Xinyi looked helplessly at this utterly inexperienced "colleague."

"Uh..." Officer Komatsu flushed and hurriedly handed him another pair.

Lin Xinyi deftly put on the gloves, then gave Officer Komatsu a meaningful look.

"Let me help you conduct the external examination again this time."

"Write down what I say in order."

"Okay!" Officer Komatsu readily agreed. He had no idea how to conduct the examination himself anyway.

Only then did Lin Xinyi finally begin.

Rather than rushing to reveal the truth of the case, he took the opportunity to patiently teach Officer Komatsu the procedures for an external examination.

Otherwise, if the police coroner remained this incompetent...

That was truly unsettling.

There was a standardized procedure for an external examination. If one followed it from beginning to end, then even if the truth could not be seen clearly, at least all the clues could be recorded completely.

"Fill in the victim's name, examination location, examination time, and other information yourself."

"Then first measure the ambient temperature and relative humidity at the examination site."

Lin Xinyi took a thermometer and hygrometer from the kit and measured them.

"Ambient temperature: 35.5."

"Relative humidity: 46%."

Officer Komatsu nodded and quickly wrote it down beside him.

"Now we'll start with several macroscopic observations."

Lin Xinyi took out a measuring tape and carefully measured the body.

"Body length: 161 cm."

"Pale skin, no jaundice, normal development, good nutritional condition, no deformities in the limbs."

"No Livor Mortis. No rigor mortis. No signs of decomposition. Muscles feel relaxed under pressure."

"Body temperature... we'll skip that for now."

The best places to measure body temperature were the rectum and liver. With so many people watching, it was inconvenient to examine them.

"After recording those items, we'll examine each part of the body."

"Start with the head and work downward."

"First, the head and face."

"Hair: black, short and tousled, 8 cm long at the crown."

"Auricles: no abnormalities. External auditory canals: no abnormalities."

"External nose: abrasions. Nasal cavity: no abnormal discharge observed."

Lin Xinyi had actually begun to stray somewhat from the subject.

He had said he would use evidence to put Ishikawa away, yet he was now using the autopsy as an opportunity to give Officer Komatsu an on-site lesson.

But no one present questioned his delay. Instead, they watched with intense focus.

That was because Lin Xinyi was completely unlike every famous detective before him.

He focused primarily on the body, and his investigative methods were just like this—clear-cut and orderly, like an assembly line in a factory, highly regulated and standardized.

Other detectives were like master craftsmen celebrated for their "artisan spirit," relying on irreplaceable manual skills to shine.

Lin Xinyi, on the other hand, was an industrial production line—strictly standardized and methodically organized.

"Pay attention. Here comes the important part."

Just as everyone watched intently and Officer Komatsu listened closely, Lin Xinyi suddenly emphasized his tone.

As he measured the wounds with a ruler from the kit, he spoke calmly.

"A 2.0 cm × 0.3 cm contused laceration was present in the center of the forehead."

"A 4.0 cm × 3.0 cm depressed skull fracture extended from the left forehead to the outer edge of the left brow ridge, accompanied by two contused lacerations measuring 1.0 cm × 0.6 cm and 2.0 cm × 1.0 cm respectively."

"None of the above wounds showed bleeding, swelling, or tissue retraction, and the wounds had yellowish-brown discoloration."

As he spoke, he deliberately paused and turned his gaze toward Officer Komatsu.

Sure enough, Komatsu stared back at him with complete confusion.

The answer had practically been spoon-fed to him, and he still had not understood a thing.

"Ah..."

Lin Xinyi sighed helplessly.

"The victim had a skull fracture, and the facial injuries were concentrated in distribution, showing they were caused in a single event."

"Together with the extensive abrasions on the exposed parts of the limbs, it can basically be determined that these injuries were caused by a fall from a height."

"In other words, the victim really did fall from a building."

Finally understanding, Ishikawa immediately growled anxiously from the side.

"Doesn't that mean Uchida jumped to his death?"

"W-what else could there be?"

"Of course there is." Lin Xinyi temporarily gave up teaching Officer Komatsu. The man was clearly a complete novice who could not be trained up anytime soon.

He looked coldly at Ishikawa and shifted his attention to exposing the truth.

"The victim did fall from a building."

"But I never said he jumped while he was alive."

"Because I just mentioned..."

"Although the injuries on the body matched the characteristics of fall injuries, the wounds on his head and face and most of the abrasions on his body had turned yellow or yellowish-brown, with no vital reaction such as bleeding, swelling, or tissue retraction."

Once a person dies, all bodily functions stop operating. If the body then suffers external force, the resulting injuries will look entirely different from those sustained while alive.

Once a person died, all bodily functions ceased. If external force injured the body afterward, the resulting wounds would look entirely different from injuries sustained before death.

"Ishikawa, do you think your trick was so clever?"

"And this victim, without a doubt, did not die from a fall from a height."

"And this victim undoubtedly did not die from a fall."

"The true cause of death can be found here."

Lin Xinyi produced ironclad evidence proving that the victim had not died from jumping off the building at all.

Then he slightly lifted the victim's head so everyone could see his neck.

"Subcutaneous hemorrhaging is faintly visible on the neck, distributed on both sides of the larynx. They are clearly marks of violent strangulation."

"This shows that someone forcefully gripped the victim's neck before his death."

"S-so what?"

Ishikawa had long prepared an excuse for this point.

"Not long ago, Aoki and I beat Uchida up."

"We did grab his neck, but we didn't strangle him to death. It was just an ordinary fight."

He directly admitted to bullying Uchida.

But at the same time, Ishikawa completely separated himself from Uchida's death.

After all, strangulation marks could only prove that he had grabbed Uchida's neck. They could not prove that Uchida had been strangled to death by him.

But Lin Xinyi merely said coldly to him.

"Stop fantasizing."

"Do you really think I can only see something as simple as strangulation marks?"

"If I could not even determine the victim's true cause of death, then all my reading would have been for nothing."

As he spoke, he bent down again and carefully pried open the victim's eyelids.

"Everyone can see that the victim's eyelids and bulbar conjunctiva are congested and covered in dense hemorrhagic spots."

"What is that? Why is there bleeding like that?"

"This petechial hemorrhaging is related to increased vascular permeability caused by asphyxial hypoxia, capillary rupture, and elevated blood pressure. It commonly appears during asphyxia or within fifteen to thirty seconds afterward."

"The victim also had facial congestion, cyanosis, and a bluish-purple complexion."

"This was because compression of his neck before death obstructed venous return from the head and face, causing severe blood stasis. Combined with increased reduced hemoglobin in the blood, it resulted in cyanotic swelling of the face."

Lin Xinyi's gaze was like a blade, aimed directly at Ishikawa's increasingly fragile mental defenses.

"Everything I just described is a basic sign of death by asphyxiation."

"With those signs, along with the fall injuries already confirmed to have been inflicted after death..."

"It is enough to prove that the victim died of mechanical asphyxiation caused by external force, not suicide by jumping."

"And finding the murderer who killed him..."

"Is not difficult at all."

Lin Xinyi raised the victim's hand so everyone could see his fingertips.

"There are obvious defensive injuries and restraint marks on the victim's wrists. This shows that he resisted while the murderer attacked him."

"He may be dead, but his resistance was not entirely ineffective."

"At the very least, he left evidence beneath his fingernails."

"There are skin flakes from the murderer beneath his nails. Testing the DNA of those flakes will identify the murderer."

"And the murderer's body probably still bears scratches inflicted when the victim resisted."

"I..."

Ishikawa's expression changed. He instinctively covered his arm, where several bloody scratches were exposed.

"So what if I have scratches?"

"I told you, I beat Uchida up before. Isn't it perfectly normal for his nails to have my skin flakes under them?"

"Idiot!"

Lin Xinyi was so angered by this stubborn murderer that he laughed.

"Didn't I already prove Uchida's true cause of death?"

"Since he died from homicidal asphyxiation, not suicide by jumping..."

"Then those skin flakes are enough to serve as crucial evidence identifying the murderer!"

"Ishikawa."

A different kind of pressure entered his voice.

"With ironclad evidence before you, what else do you have to say?"